President Trump says he signed a $1.3 trillion spending measure averting a government shutdown hours after saying he was considering a veto. He warns Congress he "will never sign a bill like this again." (March 23)
AP

If you don’t understand the federal budget process that culminated Friday when President Donald Trump signed the $1.3 trillion spending plan for 2018 into law, you’re not alone.

“It is super complex,” said U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami. “Members of Congress don’t get it, some of them. There are so many new ones.”

Diaz-Balart, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, had a hand in crafting the budget signed by Trump after a day of uncertainty in which he hinted he might veto it.

Diaz-Balart is happy to talk about what’s in the budget, especially the priorities that came out of his subcommittee.

“On infrastructure, there’s been a lot of talk, but this is real,” he said. "This is concrete. This is a huge down payment on what the president has been talking about."

And on Florida issues, such as Everglades restoration, repairs to the Herbert Hoover Dike and money to combat citrus greening:

“This is good news for Florida.”

However, Diaz-Balart, who represents eastern Collier County as well as parts of Miami-Dade County, knows he has a lot of explaining to do when it comes to understanding the budget.

For instance, how can you possibly pass a 2,200-page budget that was just released a day before?

And why all this fanfare and fuss over a $1.3trillion bill when the federal budget this year will be close to $4 trillion?

And what happened to the Republicans' supposed concern over deficits? How can we ever hope to balance the budget when domestic spending is going up by 12 percent and defense spending is going up by 15 percent?

Diaz-Balart offers answers, although they might not satisfy everyone.

Although the budget voted on by both houses of Congress and signed by Trump was first released Wednesday, before Thursday’s House vote, the framework had been around for months, Diaz-Balart said.

The House passed budget bills in various areas — defense, transportation, education, etc. — about six months ago. The Senate never got around to approving a budget of its own.

Without an approved budget signed by the president, the government ran on a series of continuing resolutions, punctuated by partial government shutdowns when they ran out.

About a month ago, you’ll recall, with another shutdown looming, Republicans and Democrats struck a deal to fund the government through March 23. It included setting spending levels higher than the approved House budget. Democrats wanted more domestic spending and Republicans wanted more defense spending.

Those additional amounts were added to the House budgets that already had been approved.

So, the only thing legislators were seeing for the first time was where the new money was being allocated.

It’s no small amount, Diaz-Balart acknowledged, but it’s not as if the new budget was created out of whole cloth in the 48 hours before it was signed into law.

“There’s a lot of noise out there. The additions are what were being negotiated. Those (House budgets) have been out there for six months,” he said.

The $1.3 trillion figure, as mind-boggling as it is, is only about a third of the annual federal budget. The other two-thirds, called mandatory spending, is for Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and interest payments on the national debt, which stands at more than $21 trillion.

The one-third of the budget, known as discretionary spending, is what Congress controls through the annual budget process.

Diaz-Balart argues Congress had been doing a good job of keeping discretionary spending in check, but it came at a cost of underfunding the military. The new budget provides for more troops, better pay and new planes, tanks and ships for the military.

About half of discretionary spending goes to defense, so domestic spending amounts to only about one-sixth of the federal budget.

To have a real impact on annual deficits and the national debt, mandatory spending must be addressed, Diaz-Balart said.

“Those programs are important, but they are spiraling out of control,” he said.

Francis Rooney is the U.S. representative for Florida's 19th congressional district in Southwest Florida.(Photo: ERIN GRANZOW)

He’s not optimistic anything will happen soon. The House would consider changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid but he sees little enthusiasm for it elsewhere in Washington, D.C.

“The Senate doesn’t want to deal with it. The previous president didn’t want to deal with it, and this president says he doesn’t want to deal with it,” Diaz-Balart said.

So, Diaz-Balart voted for the budget, as did Rep. Francis Rooney, a Naples Republican who represents the rest of Collier County.

Rooney, who also touted the defense spending in the budget, put out a statement after his vote:

“Legislation is often imperfect, and this bill is no exception.

"The unfortunate reality is that sixty votes are needed in the Senate to pass an appropriations plan and keep our government open.

"Overall, I believe that rebuilding our military, which is struggling to provide parts for airplanes and now has the smallest Navy since World War I, is critical to the security of our country, and that funding Everglades restoration and Herbert Hoover Dike repairs at the full amount requested by the Army Corps is critical to Southwest Florida.”

Said Diaz-Balart:

“Are there things I don’t like? Of course. But we live in a democracy.”